In episode 21 of The Crypto Files, we take a look at Almas. The Almas or Alma, Mongolian for "wild man" is much like the Yeti or our American Bigfoot. There is a long history of sightings and tales about Almas. Everything from written sightings to tales of the capture of an Almas. Even though the creature is not currently recognized or cataloged by science, there is a lot of interest in the subject.
Speculation that Almases may be real and not just a legendary creature
is based on eyewitness accounts, footprint finds, and long-standing native traditions.
I was alerted by a friend of a possible track find in London, KY. The above photo shows what appears to be a very large track. There also appears to be toes if you look closer. This along with more tracks were found only a couple days ago on 12/03/15.
Here is what the poster (Darlene) of the photo had to say:
"I just had to share this with u. Yesterday I found Bigfoot footprints in my driveway yesterday and freaked us out. Here is a picture of one of them. U can see there left and right all down my driveway and if u zoom in on this picture, U can see the toes . The prints are over 4 feet apart all the way down my driveway, plus my grass in the backyard has been wollered on and my clothes line has been torn down. Also heard grunting a few days ago. Josh is 6 foot 4 and he tried making the same steps and couldn't."
I was able to talk with Darlene via messaging and she told me her son's shoe size is a 14 wide and that it was no comparison to the foot tracks.
Darlene also posted the following picture, which I have added some red arrow to, of what appears to be multiple tracks.
I hope to have a little more information about this in the near future. Kentucky is an idea place for Bigfoot with it's abundant resources and mild winters.
A thanks goes to Darlene for messaging with me and for sharing her photos and a thanks to our friend John, who alerted us to this very recent finding.
Thanks
~Tom~
This
post by Thomas Marcum, Thomas is the founder/leader of the
cryptozoology and paranormal research organization known as The Crypto
Crew. Over 20 years experience with research and investigation of
unexplained activity, working with video and websites. A trained wild
land firefighter and a published photographer, and poet
This post sponsored in part by
(Interested in sponsoring a story? then send us an Email!)
HISTORY
The Tasmanian Tiger, otherwise known
as the Thylacine (a conjugation of its scientific name) was an
inhabitant of Australia and Tasmania up to about 12,000 years ago. Once
dingoes appeared on the Australian mainland the thylacine population
disappeared, with the only surviving population being left on the island
of Tasmania. When farmers moved to Tasmania in the early 1800s, the
thylacines were seen as pests that were good for nothing other than
killing the livestock of the farmers. A systematic slaughter of the
thylacines was set in place, with bounties being rewarded for the
scalps. By the early 1900s thylacines were rare creatures, and the last
bounty was paid in 1909. The last reported killing of a "tiger" was
1930. The thylacines were given protected status in 1933, but it was too
late... the last thylacine found was captured and sent to the Hobart
Domain Zoo just two months after they became a protected species. This
last thylacine died on September 7, 1936. The people of Australia and
Tasmania mourned the loss of their Tasmanian Tiger. Tasmania put the
thylacine on its official Coat of Arms. This thylacine was later named
"Benjamin".
DESCRIPTION
The thylacine closely resembles a
dog, but it is actually a carnivorous marsupial, belonging to the same
family as the kangaroo and Tasmanian devil. The male thylacine would
reach 6 feet in length from head to tail, at about 45 lbs. It sported
distinctive stripes that began in mid-back and continued down to the
tail. Females were smaller. The bunched and extended rear was
reminiscent of hyenas. The tail was long, thin, inflexible and did not
wag. Its fur was coarse and sandy-brown. They had pouches in which they
carried their young. The opening on their pouches faced towards the rear
of the animal, rather than towards the head (as with Kangaroos).
Thylacines often hunted in pairs, but they did not have great speed, the
best they could do was a fast clumsy "ambling", and they seemed to
catch up to prey mainly by exhausting it from constant chase. They fed
on various animals up to the size of kangaroos. They had powerful
elongated jaws with a huge gape that could crush the skulls of their
victims. When hunted by people using dogs, the thylacines would show no
fear when cornered and would often kill the first dog to go in. The
thylacines normally did not make any sound, but while hunting they were
heard to sometimes make a quick barking "yip-yip". No known recording
exists. Thylacines were primarily nocturnal animals. Little is known
about their social habits. From shot and captured specimens it seems
that a typical thylacine litter was 3 or 4 "pups". The thylacines that
were captured and put into captivity often died quickly, but some
survived up to 13 years. They did not make for great attractions at the
zoos, caged thylacines were morose and did not respond to affection from
their human caretakers.
THE SIGHTINGS BEGIN
Soon after Benjamin's
death, reports of thylacine sightings came in from the mountains of
northwestern Tasmania. Australia's Animals and Birds Protection Board
sent an investigative team into the area but all they came back with
were some interesting reports from the inhabitants of the area. Interest
was high and another expedition that was sent in 1938 found the first
evidence of living thylacines - footprints that were positively
identified as belonging to thylacines. After this expedition, World War
II intervened and the next expedition did not take place until 1945.
This privately funded expedition found thylacine footprints and
collected more sighting reports.
SHEEP KILLINGS
In
1957 zoologist Eric R. Guiler, chairman of the Animals and Birds
Protection Board, went to Broadmarsh to investigate the killing of some
sheep by an unknown predator. Tracks were found that were identified as
thylacine prints. But no thylacine was found. Several more expeditions
followed between 1957 and 1966, but these produced only more footprints
and more reports of sightings from the local residents.
HIDDEN CAMERAS
In
1968 a Tiger Center was established, to which people could report their
thylacine sightings. Expeditions continued to beat the brush in the
wildlands of Tasmania searching for thylacines. In the 1970s a project
was set up by the World Wildlife Fund that set up several
automatic-camera units at locations where sightings were concentrated.
Bait was used and infrared beams were used to trigger the cameras. The
project ended in failure in 1980, no thylacines were captured on film.
In his official report, project leader Steven J. Smith of the National
Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) stated his view that thylacines are
extinct. Zoologist Eric Guiler later set up his own hidden camera
operation, but this attempt to capture a living thylacine on film also
failed. But the number of reported sightings shot up between 1970 and
1980, a total of 104. This gave investigators new hope in finding a
remnant population of thylacines still surviving in the more remote
areas of Tasmania. Reports of living thylacines also began to come in
from southwestern Western Australia, which was very strange because
thylacines were eliminated from mainland Australia thousands of years
ago after the introduction of dingoes, which made quick work of the
slower moving thylacines.
LIVING THYLACINE IDENTIFIED BY PARK RANGER
On
a rainy night in March of 1982 a NPWS park ranger was sleeping in the
back seat of his car. Something woke him up and he turned on his
spotlight, and turned it onto an animal that was about 20 feet away. He
said it was a thylacine, "an adult male in excellent condition, with 12
black stripes on a sandy coat." The animal ran off, and because of the
rain, no footprints were left.
The NPWS kept the report
from the public until January 1984, in order to keep people from going
to the area and disturbing the possible habitat of the last living
thylacines. This sighting did not prove the existence of living
thylacines to the government's satisfaction though, and no official
statement was made to that effect. There was also the question of was to
do about the extensive mining and timber operations in the area. If
living thylacines were found, would the government have to shut down
those commercial enterprises? The question of protection of thylacines
versus business interests was a thorny one that the government would
have to be very careful about. Real proof of living thylacines was
necessary - a live or dead thylacine body would have to be produced.
A THYLACINE SHOT IN 1981?
Following
the rash of thylacine sightings in Western Australia, the state's
Agricultural Protection Board sent Kevin Cameron, a tracker of
aboriginal descent, to investigate. Soon Cameron reported that he
himself sighted and identified a living thylacine in Western Australia.
But this was not proof enough. Then in 1985 Cameron produced pictures
that he claimed were taken of a living thylacine, along with casts of
thylacine footprints. The pictures were presented to zoologist Athol M.
Douglas at the Western Australian Museum in Perth. They showed an dog
like animal burrowing at the base of the tree. The head was hidden from
view, but its striped back and stiff tail strongly implied that it was a
thylacine. Suspicions began to arise though. Cameron would not say
where he took the pictures, and he vacillated on giving permission to
have the pictures reproduced for publication, eventually agreeing.
Cameron accompanied Douglas to a photographic laboratory while he made
enlargements. Douglas found,
"When I saw the negatives, I
realized Cameron's account with regard to the photographs was
inaccurate. The film had been cut, frames were missing, and the photos
were taken from different angles - making it impossible for the series
to have been taken in 20 or 30 seconds, as Cameron had stated.
Furthermore, in one negative, there was the shadow of another person
pointing what could be an over-under 12 gauge shotgun. Cameron had told
me he had been alone. It would have been practically impossible for an
animal as alert as a thylacine to remain stationary for so long while
human activity was going on in its vicinity. In addition, it is
significant that the animal's head does not appear in any of the
photographs." The story and pictures were released in the New Scientist
magazine, and its readers were soon criticizing the authenticity of the
photographs. They pointed out that the animal seemed to stay dead still
from photograph to photograph. And they realized by the differing
lengths of the shadows that the pictures were taken over at least an
hour. It would seem that the pictures were a hoax, and the specimen was a
stuffed thylacine. But the first picture, the one that showed the
shadow of a person holding a gun aimed at the thylacine, was omitted
from the New Scientist story. Douglas feels that,
"The
full frame of this negative is the one which shows the shadow of the man
with a rigid gun-like object pointing in the direction of the thylacine
at the base of the tree. This shadow was deliberately excluded in the
photos published in New Scientist. If I am correct in this supposition,
the thylacine was alive when the first photo was taken, but had been
dead [and frozen in rigor mortis] for several hours by the time the
second photograph was taken." Douglas hoped that the carcass would
surface, but that is doubtful since shooting a thylacine is punishable
by a $5000 fine. Cameron was not helpful in shedding any further light
on it. So the "Cameron" episode remains clouded in mystery. Either it
was a hoax using a stuffed thylacine, or a living thylacine was shot,
for reasons unknown, and pictures were taken of it. The fact that the
head is not in any of the photographs may be because the animal was shot
in the head. If they were using a stuffed thylacine, then why hide the
head?
THYLACINE CARCASS FOUND IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA
In
1966 an expedition from the Western Australia Museum found a thylacine
carcass in a cave near Mundrabilla Station. Carbon dating showed the
carcass to be 4,500 years old, but that method of dating may be invalid
since the body had been soaking in groundwater which permeated the whole
body. Zoologist Athol Douglas reported that along with the thylacine
carcass was also found a dingo carcass, and that the dingo carcass was
much more deteriorated than the thylacine carcass. Douglas gave his
opinion that the dingo carcass was not older than 20 years, and that the
thylacine carcass was not older than a year. But since the carbon
dating argues against a recent death of this thylacine, official proof
of surviving thylacines has still not been claimed.
THE SIGHTINGS SPREAD
Cryptozoological
investigator Rex Gilroy has collected various reports of thylacine
sightings from "over a wide area of the rugged eastern Australian
mountain ranges, from far north Queensland through New South Wales to
eastern Victoria." Casts of footprints found in those areas have been
verified as thylacine prints. Gilroy even claims to have seen a
thylacine himself. Diving at night with a friend along a highway towards
the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, something dashed out of the scrub
along the highway and ran in front of them. It then stopped and stared
back at the headlights for a few seconds before running off into the
scrub, towards Grose Valley. It was "almost the size of a full-grown
Alsatian dog, with fawn-colored fur and a row of blackish stripes...I
have no doubt that it was a thylacine; its appearance matched that of
stuffed specimens preserved in Government museums."
Another
Park Ranger reported seeing a thylacine in 1990. Ranger Peter Simon was
in the Namadgi-Kosciusco National Park along the New South
Wales-Victoria border when he saw what he identified as a thylacine in
broad daylight at a range of 100 feet. After Peter Simon published an
article on his sighting and the thylacine mystery in The Age magazine,
he received many cards and letters from Victoria residents who also
claimed to have seen Thylacines. Peter Simon said that the reports were
so consistent that they, " left me in no doubt that each had seen
something unusual [and] ... broadly consistent with the appearance of a
thylacine."
SUPERNATURAL APPEARANCES?
In
1982 a Western Australian farming couple claimed to have lost livestock
to thylacine predation, and say that they always gets a "prickly
feeling" at the back of his neck when the thylacines were nearby. That
"prickly feeling" is sensation that is widely reported when people
experience encounters with strange out of place creatures or entities.
Australian
writer Tony Healy reported that on the day before Ranger Peter Simon
was to have his encounter with a thylacine, his hunting dogs refused to
leave a truck that they were being transported in after they heard
strange harsh panting sounds in the brush nearby.
At a
Benedictine monastery named New Hoacia, the secretary to the Addot, Tony
James, walked into a room early in the morning and saw a thylacine, "We
both froze, and he looked at me, in quite a fearless way, and I sense
that he was just simply filled with curiosity at the sighting." The
animal fled. Tony feels that perhaps the animal was feeding off the
table scraps that were usually left out for the magpies every morning.
Another member of the monastery also reported seeing an animal that fit
the description of a thylacine while driving from the monastery.
On
April 7, 1974, at 3:30 a.m. Joan Gilbert was driving in the outskirts
of Bournemouth, England, when a strange animal ran across her
headlights. It was a, "strange striped creature, half cat and half dog.
It was the most peculiar animal I have ever seen. It had stripes, a long
thin tail, and seemed to be all gray, though it might have had some
yellow in it. Its ears were set back like a member of the cat family,
and it was as big as a medium-sized dog. It was thin, and it definitely
was not a fox." She identified it as a thylacine when she found a
picture of it in a reference book.
- Selected Sources: Clark, Jerome, Unexplained! Animal X (Discovery Channel) - Please note I DO NOT know the original source for this post. No copyright infringement intended. Will be happy to credit original source.
Thanks
~Tom~
This
post by Thomas Marcum, Thomas is the founder/leader of the
cryptozoology and paranormal research organization known as The Crypto
Crew. Over 20 years experience with research and investigation of
unexplained activity, working with video and websites. A trained wild
land firefighter and a published photographer, and poet
This post sponsored in part by
(Interested in sponsoring a story? then send us an Email!)
I recently was back out in Bigfoot Research Area 1, and I made a discovery that got me a little excited. I have been researching this area for almost 3 years and there has been a lot of evidence and activity. But I had never found any juvenile Bigfoot tracks in this area. I suspected that there was some in the area for various reasons. Well, on the 24th of August, I found several juvenile Bigfoot tracks.
There seemed to be some other activity since my last visit. There were numerous large track impressions, but there was not much detail to them. There were also several new stick breaks and other odd stick-related things. I hope to share some of this in another video in a few days.
For now, I want to share some videos of the discovery of the juvenile Bigfoot tracks.
Here is the video.
I got a report in last night and have been following up on it today. This possible finding of multiple tracks was send in my John. I will not use his last name to protect his privacy.
John and his 8 year old son was out fishing on 5/24/15. They were in Louisville, Kentucky fishing along the Ohio river. They were fishing near Shawnee park. This is a heavily populated area but if you were to cross the river there is a lot of forest land. Here is a map of the area.
A Western Kentucky family is reportedly being terrorized by a group of mysterious creatures. A man who wishes to be unidentified for now claims that his property and home have been attacked nightly by creatures he thinks could be extraterrestrial in origin. He describes the creatures as having no facial features except for a lip less mouth and large oily eyes and they are the stature or size of a small child. He claims the attacks have been ongoing now for months and are increasing in intensity.
The man believes the creatures are possibly cave-dwellers and are located in an abandoned mine shaft that is located at the edge of his property. He has sent letters to a team of paranormal investigators for some help in identifying these mysterious creatures. The man was able to get a photograph of footprints he claims is left behind by these creatures. According to reports there are photos of multiple footprints.
Many people are connecting these reports with the Kelly–Hopkinsville encounter which happened in 1955 which is one of the most well known and significant cases in area of Ufology. Maybe the creatures reported seen by the farming families then have now returned.